Pantone has released their 2015 Color of the Year and the name of it is...Marsala. As in Chicken Marsala or the town in Italy. No offense to the color overlords at Pantone, but we're not sure Marsala is what we'd call this particular shade of red-brown.

If we've learned anything about the color about the color red, it's that some people can't see it, that it's nevertheless splashed over very important public signs, and that it makes people want to drop whatever they're doing and procreate. Procreate hard.

A recent study says guys think women who wear red are up for sex — but this is just the latest in a long string of findings (and stereotypes) about red. Let's break down the color's decidedly mixed reputation.

Color is everywhere; gender is everywhere; color and gender have a varied, changing, and hard-to-pin-down relationship, which nevertheless creates powerful, explicit and implicit signals by and for both the people who apply colors (to their kids, themselves, their cars) and those who see them (including themselves).

Designer Naeem Khan described a dress worn by Michelle Obama as a "nude strapless gown." Nude? For whom? In a similar vein, the Associated Press called Mrs. O's dress color "flesh," and a newspaper editor asked, "Whose flesh?"

According to a study, people with depression or anxiety are most likely to associate their mood with the color gray, while happier people are more likely to pick yellow. Weirdly, scientists think this could help treat irritable bowel syndrome. [MSNBC]

Ah, the first week of September — the beginning of the school year. (Well, at least for those of north of the Mason-Dixon line.) Luckily, the past few weeks have afforded those of us both in and outside New York ample opportunity to observe Angelina Jolie dropping off her United Colors of Benetton brood at New York…